We first want to use this space today to thank all the wonderful Ukiah Valley individuals and organizations that have helped make this a Merry Christmas for those in need, especially the children and young people affected by the Mendocino Lake Complex fire this year. The Christmas Effort, the Toy Run, Toys for Tots and many others have gone above and beyond this year and we can’t thank you enough. The generosity of this community is truly a blessing and one that we can count on year in and year out.

We could not let the week go by without taking issue with the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors over the raise they gave themselves last Monday. They voted – with the sole exception of 4th District Supervisor Dan Gjerde – to give themselves a $24,000 raise, from $61,200 to $85,500.

County CEO Carmel Angelo had her staff roll out all the usual nonsense about how underpaid our supervisors are compared to other counties. Not true.

The executive office came up with a chart showing that if you take the supervisor salaries from Nevada, Yolo, Humboldt, Lake, Napa and Sonoma counties, the average is $85,500. Of course Napa and Sonoma, among the richest of the state’s counties, were included. It’s the only way to get the result they want. Sonoma has a population of 500,000 people, no where near comparable to our 88,000. And Napa, the heart of some of the richest wine country property and incomes, is also not comparable.

If you take Sonoma and Napa out of the average, the remaining counties’ average pay for supervisors is $67,327.

Now let’s look at our own county. At $61,200, a Mendocino County supervisor’s salary was already $20,000 above the county’s average household income of $43,510 and almost $40,000 more than the median individual income of $25,275.

Years ago when the supervisors last gave themselves a big raise like this the argument was: If you don’t pay them decent salaries, you won’t get quality candidates to run for office. We see no evidence of this and still less evidence that paying them more gives county residents better outcomes on the things they care about.

The only good decision made on the subject Monday was the supervisors opting out of tying their salaries to the $200,000 salary of judges (also outrageous). And don’t forget that with this raise also comes a hike in the retirement the supervisors will get.

Perhaps it is time for the voters of this county to decide that these salaries need to be set at the ballot box. We could tie the supervisors salary to whatever salary increase percentage the county employees get. Or we could simply tie the supervisors salaries to the annual inflation rate. Either way it would still have to go on the ballot for a straight up or down vote with each supervisor election cycle.

Setting their own salaries, even with the ability to hide behind the executive office “recommendations,” doesn’t work,